M25: not a single motorist caught by speed cameras in a year

Drivers speeding on the M25 have not been issued with a single ticket from its
overhead cameras over the past year.

Technical and legal difficulties have prevented the Highways Agency from switching on the network of 36 new digital cameras intended to enforce variable speed limits on the London orbital motorway.

The failure was discovered by the AOL website, which had hoped to identify the biggest money raiser on the 117-mile long road, only to find that the cameras had caught no speeders at all.

Safety groups condemned “incompetence” by the agency, which owns the cameras although enforcement is handled by police forces along the route.

With around 500,000 drivers using the M25 every day, it is one of Europe’s busiest motorways. Cameras have been used to catch speeding drivers on it since 1995, and the network has grown during the intervening years.

They are supplemented by police patrols, which continue to enforce the limit, even if the overhead cameras do not.

The first of the digital cameras were installed in 2009, but a Highways Agency spokesman admitted that it had still not received statutory authority to use them on the Surrey, Hertfordshire and Essex stretches.

They need separate authorisation from the previous generation of cameras.

On other parts of the M25, where authority has been given, the difficulties were described as purely “technical” relating to the upgrade of the older generation of “wet film” cameras to the new digital devices. The cameras in Surrey, Hertfordshire and Essex have not even been tested yet.

The agency was working with police “as a matter of urgency” to address the situation, the spokesman said.

The problem did not apply to temporary average-speed cameras used to monitor stretches of roadworks.

The spokesman was unable to say how much the overhead cameras had cost or when it would be able to use them.

But he added: “The mandatory speed limits shown by the red rings are still enforceable and the onus remains on drivers to obey all mandatory speed limits.”

“The M25 is already used as a racetrack by a number of reckless drivers. If there is one place where we need working cameras it is on that stretch of motorway.”

Edmund King, the president of the AA, also expressed surprise.

“You do see drivers slow down when they pass under the gantries. We know there were some concerns when the signs were changing whether the cameras were keeping up,” he said.

Robert Gifford, executive director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, added: “This sounds like a perfect combination of cock-ups.”

Claire Armstrong, of the anti-camera group, Safespeed, seized on the agency’s embarrassment.

“If they believe the cameras are doing any good why aren’t they using them?” she asked. “If they do not believe that they are doing any good they should remove them and stop the paranoia they create by their presence.”